11/20/2003

Who Invented Magnetic Resonance Imaging?

"In the world according to Raymond Damadian -- businessman, doctor, and inventor -- he should have a Nobel Prize on his desk. Dr. Damadian is founder and president of the Fonar Corporation, which makes magnetic-resonance-imaging (MRI) scanners. For three decades, he has been trying to write himself into the history books as the father of MRI, and he has had some success. In 1988, he shared a National Medal of Technology for developing the medical scanner, and a decade later won a $128-million patent lawsuit, one of the largest such awards at the time. The Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm -- which awards the annual Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine -- takes a different view of the past, however. Last month it honored two other scientists -- Paul C. Lauterbur of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Sir Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham, in England -- as the key originators of the imaging technique now used in 60 million examinations every year. The award omitted any mention of Dr. Damadian. "I've been stricken from history," says Dr. Damadian. "My life's work has been stricken." "